Going Down

Two weeks ago Nevryn and I managed to spend a few days down south. Given we had been talking about doing this since September last year it was nice to finally get away.

For the non-Perthies "Down South" is a very generic term relating to any place in Western Australia that has a latitude further south than Mandurah. Mandurah was once a small town where people went to retire but is now the southerly limit of Perth city and is one of the fastest areas of real estate growth in the world. We also use equally descriptive terms to describe other regions. "Up North" is anything in WA that is North of the Perth metro area and "Over East" or "The Eastern States" which anything that is located further east of Western Australia.

We travelled from Perth down to Cowaramup stopping in Busselton for a break (don't drive tired kiddies!) We made it to Cowaramup to purchase some Settlers Ridge wines. I'm not much of a wine drinker but they do a lovely drop which was well worth driving out of the way to get. The wines are low in sulphate, certified organic, are vegetarian with all but two being vegan and are very nice. We then carried on to the Karri Valley Resort (just out of Pemberton) via Margaret River, which is a very out of the way route but ment lots of time was spent eyeing the countryside.

The resort is situated in a national park and our room overlooked Lake Beedelup. A beautiful view with many ducks, fish, marron, hawks, kangaroos and other critters were spotted in the dusk. Some of the trees on the opposite side of the lake were illuminated which made for a very pretty scene once the sun went down.

We drove to the Tree Top Walk in the Valley of the Giants just out of Walpole the next day through the spectacular forests of South West Australia. The Tree Top Walk is a 600 metre walk amongst the giant tingle forests that slowly works it's way to a maximum height of 40 metres above the ground. It's amazing to be look down at the forest floor below and still look up and see the branches of the Tingle. I was terribly well behaved and didn't run along the walkway or jump up and down on it when Nevryn was on it. Though he seemed to look significantly less pale once we returned to the ground. We took a walk through the park at ground level and saw some very cute joeys who were with one of the local wildlife carers.

We stopped off at a few other national parks on the drive back to do some more walking and to look at the trees. As we covered a large area of forest it was interesting to see the different types of forests and how the plants were different between them. The Karri and Tingle are magnificent trees and there were still some very pretty wild flowers in bloom.

Spent the evening eating nibbles such as artichoke, tomatoes and olives on the balcony, drinking wine, watching the ducks splash about and the sunset. Followed it with dinner over looking the lake. The waitress was really nice and sat us in a corner by the window away from the screaming children (without me even having to ask!) They illuminate the lake near the restaraunt so we got to see alot of fish and even more ducks, including what Nevryn dubbed the "Jesus Duck" who appeared to be walking on top of the water.

Went for a nice long walk around the lake the following morning and up to the falls which were very pretty before heading out to the Gloucester Tree. One of the CALM officers was letting people feed the birds so I took some seed and became covered by several western rosellas. There was also some wood pigeons and twenty-eight parrots. I was on the ground feeding one of the twenty-eights who was sitting there nibbling seed out of my hand and was slowly moving it in order to stand up again. Ever so gently the parrot took my hand in his beak and pulled it back down to ground level so he could eat some more without having to move :)

Spent the rest of the day doing more walking through the forests, eating lunch by the side of the road (I thought it was rather dignified though- we had wine glasses), wandering around Manjimup and making our way back home.

All in all a very pleasant and relaxing trip.